Author Topic: things i don't understand  (Read 24268 times)

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #150 on: 01 July, 2019, 01:33:14 pm »
I'm sure it's a dastardly plot to keep them oozing while you anoint yourself.

But yes, that too.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #151 on: 01 July, 2019, 01:46:02 pm »
I must confess to enjoying the Iron Lady's contribution to the world of ice cream.

On a loosely related note, taps (and indeed showers) that purport to save water/energy by either mixing air with the stream, or outputting a needle-fine spray that looks the part, but fails to achieve the stated aim of supplying the user with a sufficiency of the old dihydrogen monoxide.  This becomes readily apparent when you come to fill a glass, rinse your hair or whatever.

There's a Rule According To Kim about happiness being measured in litres per minute...

ian

Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #152 on: 01 July, 2019, 01:56:53 pm »
I'm not convinced by fruit in salads if it's not a literal fruit salad (which I'll allow). I did make a coronation chicken salad once with mango which was nice initially, but I found it a bit much half-way through. Admittedly I do make salad mountains.

Anyway, hardback books. I don't understand those. I'm re-reading some older stuff from pre-ebook days that's been slowly mouldering in the garage. Much as I understand my arm muscles have likely atrophied from only having to support a Kindle or iPhone, hardback is a thoroughly impractical format. They're too heavy, difficult to handle, hard to navigate, and not even vaguely portable, and you were charged a premium for this sheer impracticality.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #153 on: 01 July, 2019, 10:35:52 pm »
Hardback books sometimes stay open on a desk without the need to break the binding.

Paperback music scores can be a PITA for the player if they have to fight a self-closer.

fuzzy

Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #154 on: 01 July, 2019, 11:07:16 pm »
But, come the Zombieapocolypse, a hard back book clutched to the chest will probably have a better bullet/ sharps stopping effect against marauding survivalists than a Kindle or Kobo. Plus it'll cook your food or heat your water better than a burning eBook.

Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #155 on: 01 July, 2019, 11:29:55 pm »
Another advantage of dead-tree books is that they aren't vulnerable to the following:

Quote
Anyone who bought ebooks through the Microsoft Store is in for a rude shock in the coming days. The good news? You can get a refund. The bad news? All of your books are going to be deleted this month.

Microsoft announced in April that it would stop selling ebooks and that any books the company already sold would stop working in early July because the DRM servers were being shut off. Yes, you read that correctly. Those books that you “bought” are going to disappear. Even the “free” books that you downloaded through Microsoft will be deleted.

https://gizmodo.com/ebooks-purchased-from-microsoft-will-be-deleted-this-mo-1836005672

You may well say that anyone who bought an eBook from MicroSith deserves no sympathy, but it's the general principle of the thing.

If, say, Waterstones closes my local branch, at least all the books I bought there won't be teleported to the recycling box overnight before its emptied...
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

Kim

  • Timelord
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Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #156 on: 01 July, 2019, 11:40:59 pm »
Hardback books sometimes stay open on a desk without the need to break the binding.

And can be a bit more sturdy than a cheap paperback for reading in bed...


Quote
Paperback music scores can be a PITA for the player if they have to fight a self-closer.

OTOH, like the ergonomics of reading in bed, this is a problem best solved by modern technology.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #157 on: 01 July, 2019, 11:48:35 pm »
Another advantage of dead-tree books is that they aren't vulnerable to the following

That's not a dead tree thing, that's a lack of DRM thing.  A better analogy is that if you take out a library book, you're deluding yourself if you think they're going to let you keep it.  Same goes for DRMed media[1]: At best you're placing your bets on a company staying in business (or releasing their keys as abandonware when the time comes), at worst you're signing up to an exploitative subscription model.  Don't think the Great Publishing Corporations of Ursa Minor wouldn't encrypt paper books if they thought you could do the maths in your head to read them, instead they have to resort to tactics like persuading academics to use their latest edition as the course text.

DRM is evil and should be eschewed, but unencumbered[2] ebooks are awesome.  (Yes, I'm also a luddite who still buys music on CD because it's a non-proprietary format and comes with a free read-only backup.)


[1] And, for that matter, any product that requires a third-party internet service to operate.
[2] Calibre is your friend.

bludger

  • Randonneur and bargain hunter
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #158 on: 02 July, 2019, 12:01:43 am »
I used to use calibre but have found that actually you can just email mobibuckrt and pdf files to your kindles email address, no need to mess around with USB cables and synchronisation or whatever.
YACF touring/audax bargain basement:
https://bit.ly/2Xg8pRD



Ban cars.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #159 on: 02 July, 2019, 12:02:00 am »
Yeahbut I think you're missing the point there, Kim. DRM can't exist in printed format. It can exist in physical digital format, as in DVDs which will only play in certain parts of the world, but ink on paper (or scratches in clay, say) is there forever and you can read it after it's gone out of copyright etc etc. 
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Kim

  • Timelord
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Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #160 on: 02 July, 2019, 12:13:21 am »
Yeahbut I think you're missing the point there, Kim. DRM can't exist in printed format.

Of course it can, it's all just digital data.  It's just that the customers wouldn't accept a paper book that they had to decrypt (either by hand, or more practically by inputting it into a computer somehow to do the heavy lifting), so if you want to sell paper books you have no choice but to do it in plaintext, expecting that it will get read many times, and you price your products accordingly.

On the other hand, if you sell them a fondleslab with a *CLICKY FOR TEH BOOKS* button, they'll click on it and get so absorbed in reading about the Dancing Pigs that they won't consider that it might disappear in three years time, or require a $0.20 monthly subscription to keep reading, or be unable to lend it to a friend or whatever.  A lot of very slick marketing has gone into public acceptance of this sort of thing.  To the point where people routinely think that copyright infringement is theft...


DVDs regions are more akin to printing books in FOREIGN languages:  They're still playable by anyone, it's just that the industry has tried (and largely failed) to made it difficult to obtain a DVD player that won't refuse to play other regions' discs.  I suppose the book equivalent would be publishers trying to restrict language lessons, which demonstrates the disproportionate power of big business armed with new proprietary technology and government lobbyists.

I suppose the main difference between DRM and proprietary analogue formats (I'm thinking NTSC/PAL, VHS/Beta, various widths of tape and RPMs of vinyl and so on) is that each different format came at substantial cost to the manufacturers, whereas with DRM they can slice up the market simply by generating a new set of encryption keys.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #161 on: 02 July, 2019, 12:23:51 am »
If you were having to input it into a computer then it wouldn't, in effect, be a printed book. And if you had to decrypt it by hand (head?), like a paper Rosetta stone or a pig pen code or something, then how would that be reliant on DRM? I don't think we're talking about the same sort of paper here, as I can't see how the marks on a piece of paper can be made to disappear or alter at the will of some copyright holder.
To the point where people routinely think that copyright infringement is theft...
And think that it's infringement of copyright just to mention a character name that's been used in a book, film, or whatever, or to put a brand name into a story.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Kim

  • Timelord
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Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #162 on: 02 July, 2019, 12:40:38 am »
If you were having to input it into a computer then it wouldn't, in effect, be a printed book. And if you had to decrypt it by hand (head?), like a paper Rosetta stone or a pig pen code or something, then how would that be reliant on DRM? I don't think we're talking about the same sort of paper here.

I think you're confusing software (the Mona Lisa, Sgt Pepper, Goldfinger, The Bible, this post) and hardware (paper and ink, silver and cellulose, magnetised oxides, grooves or pits in a piece of clay or plastic, charges in a flash memory circuit, bases in a DNA strand), and assuming that since machine-readable formats make cryptography practical at a level that's almost transparent to the user, that impractical combinations couldn't exist.

I could, at least in principle, sell you a book of gibberish that you could painstakingly decode by comparing it to a key I send you by subscription every week in disappearing ink[1].  And then lobby the government to make pens and photocopiers and whatever illegal, in the hope of preventing you from keeping or distributing a copy of the key, or the decrypted text.  That's basically DRM.  It's just a lot easier to hide the absurdity of it when you do it with computers (you probably didn't even notice your computer decrypting this text, for example).

DRM isn't a Mission Impossible style tape that will self destruct in 10 seconds.  It's that you always have to phone a friend to find out what the words in the book mean while you're reading it, because they only publish it in Klingon.


[1] Points to anyone who can come up with a example of such a system being used commercially (rather than for military communications or espionage or whatever) from the days before modern telecommunications.  I bet someone's done it.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #163 on: 02 July, 2019, 01:05:04 am »
That would be RM without the D. But even if I had to spend several lifetimes working out what it meant, I would still have the printed gibberish – whereas what Microsoft have done, IIUIC, is that you no longer have anything.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Kim

  • Timelord
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Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #164 on: 02 July, 2019, 01:10:35 am »
That would be RM without the D. But even if I had to spend several lifetimes working out what it meant, I would still have the printed gibberish – whereas what Microsoft have done, IIUIC, is that you no longer have anything.

Well that would be an even shittier implementation than usual (but, ultimately, not that different from how this conversation is being stored).

Ah, it's classic Microsoft - they didn't even bother to produce an ebook reader, just made you read things through some website with I-can't-believe-it's-not-Internet-Explorer or something.  No wonder it wasn't a commercial success.


(And no, printed text is still digital data.  It's using a discrete alphabet, and the a-ness of an 'a' doesn't change if it's a bit blurry or badly kemed.)

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #165 on: 02 July, 2019, 01:15:20 am »
Well, no one's promising this conversation will be around for ever. But if anyone cared to print it out, they wouldn't expect the printed paper to disappear when the server explodes or Roger kicks us out for not using smileys or something. Whether it would make sense is a separate question and probably not worth answering even if it's worth asking...
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #166 on: 02 July, 2019, 01:26:26 am »
Yeah, that sort of encryption technology has completely appropriate uses.  Protecting your financial transactions from teh 1337 h4xx0rz, or whatever.  It's just evil to use it to sell people book-reading licences when they think they're buying a book.

Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #167 on: 02 July, 2019, 08:38:38 am »
If you were having to input it into a computer then it wouldn't, in effect, be a printed book. And if you had to decrypt it by hand (head?), like a paper Rosetta stone or a pig pen code or something, then how would that be reliant on DRM? I don't think we're talking about the same sort of paper here, as I can't see how the marks on a piece of paper can be made to disappear or alter at the will of some copyright holder.
To the point where people routinely think that copyright infringement is theft...
And think that it's infringement of copyright just to mention a character name that's been used in a book, film, or whatever, or to put a brand name into a story.
Easy.

Hash the marks on the paper. Make them readable via spectacles that 'decode' the marks into plain text. The spectacles don't need to be connected to 'the cloud', just running firmware that is basically a form of DRM.
Update the firmware to make the marks unreadable.

Boom.
<i>Marmite slave</i>

ian

Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #168 on: 02 July, 2019, 09:15:46 am »
Why spectacles, they could operate on your eyes to print DRM enable them. In fact, there's an entire range of visual services they could enable for a monthly subscription. This, my friends, is the future.

I don't have an issue with standard paperbacks, they solved the weighty hardback problem (don't get me going on trade paperbacks). Their spines are designed to be broken. I don't trust paperbacks with an unbroken spine, there's something off, and the owner probably hasn't read them. Admittedly, if it's Twilight or the Further Adventures of Dan Brown, that's probably not a bad thing.

To be fair to Microsoft, they had six customers and three of those signed up accidentally, and one was a cat. And they did return the money. The issue, of course, is that they didn't really have to do anything. DRM is crap, I'm not sure why some businesses haven't realised: you can find any book, piece of music, or film for free if you really want. To be fair to Amazon, Apple etc. it's usually the licence holders (or at least the management of those entities) that had pushed the issue.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #169 on: 02 July, 2019, 10:20:20 am »
Perhaps the Voynich Manuscript was an early attempt at non-D RM?
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #170 on: 02 July, 2019, 11:32:00 am »
you probably didn't even notice your computer decrypting this text, for example).
Now, that's a thing I do think about, precisely because I don't notice it and don't understand how it happens. It's like a "realization" process, converting that text or whatever from "potential" to "reality". It's there all the time but might as well not be, sort of thing.

Ed: I suppose this could also be framed in terms of knowledge v perception, or belief v experience.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #171 on: 02 July, 2019, 01:19:20 pm »
My Kindle has its wifi permanently off so I can use Calibre to set titles etc to be consistent across series instead of some random variation a low-echelon publidroid has plucked out of the æther.  Yes, it's a faff having to download to a Babbage-Engine first but it satisfies my inner spod and, via the medium of Apprentice Alf's DeDRM plugin, strips out the annoyingness that the Mega-Global Big River Corporation of Seattle, USAnia imposes on us like income tax and shit Saturday night television.
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Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #172 on: 02 July, 2019, 01:22:09 pm »
(And no, printed text is still digital data.  It's using a discrete alphabet, and the a-ness of an 'a' doesn't change if it's a bit blurry or badly kemed.)
Hadn't spotted this last night. Yeah, good point. But perhaps DRM should more accurately be called ERM?
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #173 on: 02 July, 2019, 01:24:28 pm »
Looking at another thread around here...




Bitcoin, and definitely the discussion surrounding it.






I love the whooshing sound something makes when it goes right overhead. ;)
It's a reverse Elvis thing.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: things i don't understand
« Reply #174 on: 02 July, 2019, 01:36:46 pm »
(And no, printed text is still digital data.  It's using a discrete alphabet, and the a-ness of an 'a' doesn't change if it's a bit blurry or badly kemed.)
Hadn't spotted this last night. Yeah, good point. But perhaps DRM should more accurately be called ERM?

Well the maths really doesn't care what the substrate you use to perform the calculations is.  I think that's an important point that's worth hanging onto[1], because while we 20th century earthlings still think digital electronics is pretty neat, the rules are the same if your computer (in the Turing completeness sense) is Kathrine Johnson with a slide rule, an Intel i7, a collection of hydraulic logic gates, an ethereal being moving rocks in a desert, ants following pheremone trails, specially-engineered bacteria jibbling about with DNA, those glowing optical cube things from Star Trek or something quantum that I never really managed to get my head round properly.

As Dijkstra put it: "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."


[1] If only on the bad science makes bad law principle.